sixthiterationlogs | 001 ][ i see a ghost out on the water, i swear it has my face

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001 ][ i see a ghost out on the water, i swear it has my face

WHO: Elena Gilbert
WHERE: Fountain > Inn > Around the Village
WHEN: Nov 18 - 20th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: References to death and drowning

FOUNTAIN - Nov 18th

This had all happened before, this feeling. She was floating, waiting for the darkness to swallow her, only this time she was alone. That made it better, somehow. More peaceful. She didn't have the burden of watching her parents drown with her because of her mistakes, her selfishness.

Her lungs still burned as they screamed for air, and it was the shock of a sudden temperature difference that brought her back briefly from her oxygen-deprived haze. The water had been cold in the river below Wickery Bridge, but not this cold. Not by a long-shot. It felt like a thousand daggers were suddenly stabbing into her skin through the fabric of her drenched clothes as it sucked every last bit of warmth out of her insides.

It was hard to tell which way was up, the depth of the water disorienting, but she felt a gentle push as if she were being guided, and she managed to find the strength for a few weak kicks toward the surface.

Hopefully, someone would be nearby to give her a hand when hers managed to break the surface of the water, despite the storm. At least her bright red scrubs make her easier to see that she might be otherwise.

INN - Nov 19th

With the ice storm still going strong outside, Elena opts to stay inside where it's warm, at least for today. She's got the gist of what's going on, though she's still not convinced that she isn't dead and this is some weird sort of limbo or...whatever.

That said, everything feels very real and there are people to meet and talk to, so she forces herself to stay on the ground floor, trying to eat and drink what she can to get her strength back up and talk to as many people as she can.

They're all in this together, after all.

OUT AND ABOUT - Nov 20th

After the storm clears, Elena takes it upon herself to do a bit of exploring. It's starting to sink in that this is all very real, that she may never make it home, and that nearly everyone she's ever cared about would have very likely all passed by now. If she's being honest with herself, it would have happened sometime in the interim of her fitful sleep after her arrival, but the sheer amount of loss is just too mind-numbing to process all at once.

This is something in her face that she can focus on, at least. Getting a lay of the land and comfortable with her surroundings was important. She couldn't know what might be coming but she could try to be prepared.

She walks along the river, taking in the sights with her hands tucked into the pockets of her peacoat, making sure not to steer too far away or lose sight of the town itself. There would be time for that later, and getting lost in the cold didn't sound like a very good idea.

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Elena got points for the lingo. But as Sam scanned her face, she decided that this was exactly the kind of girl who would probably have hated her in high school, made fun of her for her lack of boobs.

Because, damn, Elena was breathtaking.

Perfect, even.

Sam shook her head. "Sorry," she muttered. "That came out kind of Bond villain. 'Who are you?' Although, in my defense, normal people say 'nice to meet you' and I would never say something like that in this clown rodeo."

While Elena wasn't that girl, one of her best friends certainly might have been if their lives hadn't completely exploded in supernatural nonsense.

Her return expression is a sympathetic smile as she tucks a lock of hair behind one ear.

"Don't worry about it. Bond villain didn't even cross my mind." They'd probably involve more threats and guns and such. Maybe even an evil laugh. Elena wasn't particularly well-versed when it came to James Bond movies. "How long have you been stuck in this so called rodeo?"

Sam rubbed the corner of her eye, scrunching up her face a little. "Uh...maybe five or six months," she said. The time really sort of bled. Every day was usually damn close to the same as the last. The monotony made it nearly impossible to mark the passage of time. Or maybe Sam was just too used to marking time by one terrible incident after another. The last four years of her life had been pretty loaded.

Life? Unlife? One of the two. Or a combination of both.

"I'm Sam," she muttered, brushing off her hand on the back of her pants, before offering it for a shake. "Los Angeles, 2014. Although originally from Chicago."

That made sense. It would be hard to keep track of the days and the months without all the normal things helping you keep it in perspective. Work. School. Holidays.

Cell phones.

Elena takes her hand in response, giving Sam's a gentle shake. The date, however, she wasn't entirely expecting. Did that mean there was...time travel involved? It didn't make much sense that this girl arrived months ago and yet was somehow from the future.

"Oh, I'm from Mystic Falls, Virginia. It was late 2010?"

She'd never heard of Mystic Falls. But that was really par for the course. Anywhere on the east coast that wasn't New York City or Disney World tended to kind of blur together into one great, big geographic blob. So she settled for shaking Elena's hand. Sam's grip was tight. The kind of handshake they emphasized in women's empowerment seminars in school. Karen and Avery were always on her case about that. She couldn't squeeze someone's hand too tight. There were hunters around. They'd notice the lack of pulse.

Joke was on them, she guessed.

How the fuck would they take to the whole 'suddenly human' bullshit? She honestly had no idea.

"2010, huh?" she said, with a slight smile. "I'd tell you who won the next Super Bowl, but I'm not big on sports ball."

Outside of her small town in Virgina, Elena would only recognize the big city names, too. She hadn't ever done a ton of traveling, like most of the people she knew. Small town families tended to stay close, for whatever reason.

As far as the Super Bowl, though?

"Honestly? Me neither. I'm not much of a gambler, either, anyway."

Nor was she old enough in most of the United States to do so. Still, she's curious about this whole time thing, her head tilting as she looks at the girl curiously.

"So you're from the future, then? That's...crazy to think about, though I'd hope not too much changes in the grand scheme of things in only four years."

A lot could happen in Mystic Falls in four years, though.

Sam couldn't quite contain a small grimace that ripped across her expression. The funny thing was, no one had ever asked her about her world. And that was the key point she figured she needed to make. It wasn't just time. It was space too.

On a metaphysical level, of course.

"Yeah, okay, so..." She wasn't great at peopling. "Are you familiar with the concept of an Einstein-Rosen bridge?" Shit. Who was she kidding? Sam shook her head. "Never mind. Does your world have Star Trek? Like, Spock with a beard in a parallel universe Star Trek?"

She really wasn't helping her cause.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she started again. "The idea of multiple universes, or a multiverse, is suggested by not just one, but numerous physics theories." She held her hands out, palms facing each other in parallel lines. "This could be one world," she said, shaking her left hand, "and this could be another," she shook her right hand. "The odds are overwhelming that this first world," left "is mine and this second one," right, "is yours. So, hopefully, my fucked up future is nothing like the one you're gonna get."

And this was why Sam couldn't have nice things...

"I know of the idea in theory. Like, very, very, very general theory. I'm not a physicist or anything but, we do at least have Star Trek. There are plenty of movies that have that kind of thing in them, too."

At least Elena has seen enough really weird stuff to not immediately throw the concept out as impossible. Nothing was all that impossible anymore.

"So you're from the same place under a different set of circumstances? Somewhere along the way something curved off in a different direction?"

The relief in Sam's chest was palpable. She was really so ill-equipped to handle the 'welcome' speech that it was just hilarious. But she had to give Elena mad props. There was a whole lot more to her than there was to her.

Apparently.

She nodded. "Exactly," she said on an exhale. "And I really, really hope your world doesn't follow mine's example, because it's bad, dude."

"Mine isn't exactly great these days, either."

She sounds a little bitter as she says it; her world had gone from completely normal to ass-backward in the space of a year and some change. There were still good things, but so much had changed and gotten torn apart that some days it was hard to find the bright side.

"I'm pretty sure I was dying when I ended up here. If it gets worse than that, I don't really want to know."

Sam couldn't really scoff at the notion. She knew better than most that there were things worse than death. But it did made her wonder if Elena was being dramatic, or if she knew something too. Maybe the Masquerade wasn't in effect here, but she still hadn't reached the point of being comfortable talking about the supernatural.

Not yet, anyway.

She opened her mouth, then shut it again. This was one of those delicate moments where social niceties were probably called for.

Too bad Sam didn't really do those.

"That blows," she said. "Sorry."

If anything, that seems to break Elena out of her darker thoughts, the corner of her mouth lifting in a partial smile.

"It's not your fault."

It's something she's sure Sam is aware of, that she's just trying in some way to be empathetic, but Elena doesn't want anyone feeling bad for her. Life wasn't fair, after all.

"It doesn't matter right now anyway. I'm here, and I'm still alive, and that means there's still things I can do."

She didn't want to completely lose hope.

Well, Sam could sort of appreciate that logic. It was the same logic that had gotten her into her Kindred mess in the first place. You didn't think about things like 'forever' when you were a seventeen-year-old kid, bleeding out on the floor of a conference room. More, you thought that you deserved to live. That you deserved more life. As if it was somehow owed to you.

She'd made her choice then. And was reasonably sure that she'd make the same decision again.

So, she couldn't blame Elena for being happy to be alive, even in this clown rodeo.

Not a lot, anyway. She'd have time to decide for herself whether it was preferable or not.

"I guess," she said. "Depending on what kind of things you want to do. Our options are a little...limited."

Elena had chosen death over the death of her friend despite all this talk about wanting to live, but she didn't think she could have lived with the crushing guilt of getting another person killed because of her existence, especially a boy who had been her friend her entire life. She didn't want that burden, not after being the reason for so many people's deaths already.

But if she was alive, she felt responsible for making sure she did something with that life and for not giving up.

"Survive, I guess. As long as I'm still here, there's a chance I can find my way back to where I belong. That's worth fighting for, right?"

It was a little cheesy.

Okay, it was a lot cheesy. But Sam could appreciate the sentiment, at least. And, in a sense, surviving was the ultimate middle finger to all the bad shit that happened to you in your life.

Including the fucking Skinner Box.

She gave Elena a small smile. "Yeah. It's worth fighting for."

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001 ][ i see a ghost out on the water, i swear it has my face

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